Live From Paris 2024: NBC and Sony Team Up on Test of Cloud-Based Switching

Live From Paris 2024: NBC and Sony Team Up on Test of Cloud-Based Switching Experimental workflow deploys software-based Sony M2L-X production switcher By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director

Friday, August 9, 2024 - 12:19 pm

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Every Olympics has its share of proofs-of-concept, with both OBS (Olympic Broadcasting Services) and media-rights holders across the globe hard at work laying a foundation for future workflows. One behind-the-scenes effort this year has been undertaken by NBC Olympics and Sony: a Sony production switcher deployed in the cloud is shadowing the truck handling the daytime gymnastics production, which is sent to NBC air from a hardware-based control room in Stamford, CT.

For the test, which is intended to compare cloud-based workflows and and better understand possible use cases, the NBC Olympics engineering team stood up a workflow fully reliant on cloud-based video-source switching and a software-based touchscreen panel, the Sony M2L-X live-production switcher.

Half the battle is assigning familiar tools, like a traditional switcher surface to drive the new-fangled backend, says Darryl Jefferson, SVP, engineering and technology, NBC Sports & Olympics. User and community adoption depends on some familiarity as we look to the future. More-granular integrated audio tools remain a solution gap, he adds, but we are hoping the tools are available when we push these tools into production.

Sony M2L-X live-production switcher handles 28 video feeds from two sources in shadowing daytime gymnastics production.

Along with the Sony M2L-X touchscreen, the NBC Olympics virtual control room uses 12 gymnastics video splits from OBS's cloud directly into NBC's cloud instance in AWS. Additionally, 16 NBC unilateral camera feeds are sent to the cloud via the NBCU NextGen backbone, for a total of 28 gymnastics-competition video feeds.

In essence, the virtual control room could deploy fully cloud-based switching with excellent accuracy and next to zero latency to produce the show. Sony's cloud-based video workflow includes audio mixing as well as chyron insertion and monitoring to bring back the program fully ready for air and release to a network.

The Sony cloud switcher also works with a Stream Deck hardware switcher if the operator prefers certain presets or functions to be physically taken versus the overall touchscreen commands on the Sony web-based GUI. Aside from the value of leveraging a non-hardware, on-premises video workflow, the Sony M2L-X allows a broadcaster to produce a show from any location that has connectivity into the cloud, making this a cost-effective and simple solution for producing mission-critical events where, as with the Paris 2024 Olympics, hundreds of video feeds are used simultaneously in a day.

Todd Donovan, VP, engineering and technology planning, NBC Sports & Olympics, says, The Sony switcher has a bunch of Parisian sources, a bunch of Connecticut sources, and there's a TD who is listening to the director in the morning-gymnastics truck and trying to follow along. It's an opportunity for us to experiment and see how well it works, as it's not designed to go anywhere.

OBS offered to also put NBC's signals into the Alibaba cloud, he adds, but NBC decided to launch them into the cloud itself to take advantage of an opportunity to learn more about how different signals from different stakeholders (and cloud environments) stack up.

One potential use of the workflow is for those moments when the production team wants to spin up additional production resources for an event but there's no time to get the gear in place or there is no space in the compound.

We want to see how this would work if you didn't have a physical switcher sitting in a truck or an equipment room, Donovan explains. You would just launch some NBC unilateral signals and some OBS signals into the cloud and assemble a show. That's what that experiment's all about.

Although it's early in the testing period, he adds, the cloud switcher and cloud environment are doing what they are supposed to do, and the TD is excited to play with the switcher (and get an early look at Sony's new switcher software.) Of course, there is much more to be done, because the switcher is just one component in a live-sports-production environment.

Every manufacturer is at a different place in creating and inventing cloud-first solutions, Donovan says, but we're very happy with what Sony has come up with, and we're working on some of the other bits and pieces. You need a lot of things that make a TV show go, but we are cautiously optimistic.

Says Jefferson, Sony's commitment to partnering with NBC on this initiative has been unprecedented. Our preliminary goals were literally white-board notions. The team's ability to bring these ideas into a product reality has been nothing short of miraculous.

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2024/08/09/live-from-paris-2024-nbc-and-so...
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